Is Obama trying once again to bring Iran back to the discussion table? CBS reports that Obama sent Iran a secret letter proposing new talks and admonishing Tehran over its threats to close the Straits of Hormuz. “In the letter, Obama called for direct talks with Iran,” the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted [Ali] Motahari [an […]

Via Meadia has been all over the ongoing catastrophe that is Detroit, but we haven’t paid much attention till now to its little brother to the north: Flint, Michigan (home of, among other things, famed panegyrist of the dying Blue Model, Michael Moore). Alike in almost every way to Detroit, Flint boasts aging factories, declining […]

The story would be as familiar to a late 18th-century Londoner as it is to a 21st-century New Yorker: Rapid technological change is fundamentally altering not just our economies but our very lives. If that sounds abstract, the result is anything but.That was the top trend Via Meadia saw shaping the world in the coming […]

On January 7 The New York Times reported that Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department of Church and Society of the Moscow Patriarchate and one of the highest officials in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in a radio interview that the ROC should serve as a mediator between the state and […]

The world economy could have its worst year since the Great Depression, the World Bank has warned.  Even if the European crisis gets no worse, the world is headed for another year of weak growth, says the prestigious bank.  And if Europe goes down, it takes the world with it: the Bank expects a shock […]

Two years ago Via Meadia looked at “The Top Global Trends for the 2010s.” Here’s what we came up with:Trend #1: Economic Upheaval Trend #2: Proliferation High and Low Trend #3: Panopolis Trend #4: Small ‘d’ democratization Trend #5: Disaggregation and The Death of the West? Trend #6: Hot Religion and the March of Abraham Trend […]

While the President’s poll numbers have fallen dramatically since the heyday of Obamamania, African Americans continue to overwhelmingly support the first African-American President. Yet the Democratic coalition contains two elements who tend to not get along very well: urban African American machine politicians and their mostly blue collar constituents on the one hand, and upper […]

Chinese officials seem to have settled on a strategy to contain the fallout from last month’s protests in Wukan: First, calm the upheaval by promoting the head of the protestors, Lin Zuluan, to Party Secretary of Wukan; return a few acres of land the protesters said were stolen; then stonewall any attempts to investigate the mysterious death of […]

In a surprising turn of events, an old piece I wrote in 2004 for Foreign Policy on “America’s Sticky Power” became the most popular item on FP’s website on Tuesday. Economic, or sticky, power is different from both sharp and soft power — it is based neither on military compulsion nor on simple coincidence of […]

Parent-teacher relations in America are beginning to look a lot like the time-honored playground game Red Rover. Teachers’ unions link arms to form a defense against, say,  charter schools; the parents, sometimes with a little help from legislatures or the courts, easily break through.The same story played out again last week, when an Indiana court […]